What it takes to be a SaaS CMO in 2025

Here are the pros and cons of being a SaaS CMO and what no one tells you.

Being a marketer, regardless of the role, is a grind and demands more than it gives. Some days it’s rewarding and other days it’s thankless. You’re only as good as your last campaign, and yet… people like you and me, we love it and we want more of it!

There are lots of people who are Directors or VPs who want to take the leap to CMO because they want more control and to drive the vision and strategy of the marketing team. But I’m here to tell you, it’s so much more than just managing a team and creating a strategy.

💡 If you remember anything from this post it should be this: BUILD YOUR NETWORK

Most marketers who are rockstars, suck at this. I mean really suck at it.

• They don’t or rarely post on LinkedIn

• They don’t join peer groups

• They don’t network unless it’s an event they are sponsoring 🤦‍♀️

📣 HEAR ME OUT: You need to have a network of two kinds:

1. a pool of folks you can hire from, AND

2. friends and colleagues you can ask questions when you have no one else to talk to because my friends, it’s very lonely at the top.

First, hiring is hard and it’s a time suck. The hardest roles to hire for are product marketing, demand gen, and marketing operations. If you didn’t inherit great people in those roles you need fix it. If you can hire people you’ve already worked with, it saves you countless hours of interviewing, makes onboarding easier, and the path to success that much faster.

Second, the air is thin at the top. When the going gets tough, it’s hard to be upbeat and motivate a team, especially when you are not feeling inspired yourself (and there will be times like this, it’s not all rosy at the CMO level). This is when it’s helpful to have colleagues and friends you can chat with or have a call with to confide in and bounce things off of. It’s also waaay cheaper than a professional coach.

***IF YOU’RE ALREADY A SaaS CMO YOU CAN STOP READING HERE***
(you already know all of this stuff anyway)

10 other things you need to know if you become SaaS CMO in 2025 and beyond…